A Look at Pre-Fall 2010: Acne

Should you have become deeply attached to your biker jacket and can’t imagine not wearing it, don’t worry. While there’s definitely a move away this spring from the hard-edged eighties toward something quite different (a look that’s athletic, romantic, or utility—or, if you’re Marc Jacobs, all three), Acne hasn’t given up on your zippered-leather object of affection. It turns up in the Swedish label’s pre-fall collection reimagined as the kind of aviator jacket Amelia Earhart might have worn if she’d been more interested in hitting Hotel Griffou and not singlehandedly flying across the Atlantic Ocean. Acne’s shearling jacket could be shrunken in black, or boyish in distressed gray leather, or slouchy in ivory. What makes the difference is what these updates on the biker are being worn with. Not leggings but great skinny denim paneled pants that hint nicely at the season’s developing fascination for the much loved and much missed Austrian archminimalist Helmut Lang. Or, long floral silk skirts with a distinctly Biba vibe and trailing silk scarves that could have graced Isadora Duncan until that nasty business with a length of silk and a car wheel. And while we’re on the subject of things that have supposedly had their time, but haven’t, direct your gaze downward to the model’s feet. Platforms, that’s all I’m saying. Sedate low heels might be on the horizon, but they haven’t eclipsed high-and-mighty heels yet.